Biography

Professor Philip Withers obtained his PhD in Metallurgy at Cambridge University and took up a lectureship there, before taking up a Chair in Manchester in 1998. His interests lie in applying advanced techniques to follow the behaviour of engineering and natural materials in real time and in 3D, often as they operate under demanding conditions. In 2005 he was elected to the Royal Academy of Engineering and in 2008 set up the Henry Moseley X-ray Imaging Facility, which is now one of the most extensive suites of 3D X-ray Imaging facilities in the world.

Awarded the Royal Society Armourers & Brasiers’ Company Prize for pioneering use of neutron and X-ray beams to map stresses and image components in 2010, his work underpins the scientific basis by which we can predict component failure. In 2012, Philip became the inaugural Director of the BP International Centre for Advanced Materials aimed understanding and developing materials across the energy sector. In 2014, the University of Manchester was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize, recognising the Manchester X-ray Imaging Facility’s work. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016.

In establishing correlative tomography, he is currently linking together X-ray and electron imaging to locate and track a 3D region of interest from metre to the nanometres length-scale.